U.S. stocks are feeling the pressure this morning from a possible U.K. exit from the European Union.
The S&P 500 is down 12 at 2,066 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down by more than 100 points.
Retail sales rose 0.5 percent in May, beating the economist’s expectations of 0.3 percent. Sales at clothing stores rose 0.8 percent, the largest amount since last November. Online sales jumped 1.3 percent over April and a whopping 12.2 percent over last year. For the last 3 months online sales shot up 10.4 percent over last year for the same time period. Department stores fell 0.9 percent from April and have fallen 4.9 percent for the last three months as compared to last year.
Activist investor Barington Group mailed a letter to the stockholders of Chico’s FAS highlighting its concerns with the company and outlining their plan to unlock the company’s value. Barington is taking credit for the company’s latest moves, but also believes it hasn’t gone far enough. Barington thinks Chico’s pays its chief executive officer Shelley Broader too much and disagrees with the latest board nominees that weren’t the people Barington picked. Barington wants to grow the Soma brand and disband the “merchant Committee” among other things.
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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is rising more than 1 percent to $76.85 after the Chinese online retailer said it expected 48 percent revenue growth in the year ending March 2017. The retailer expects to hit that goal as a result of the acquisitions the company has made like e-commerce site Lazada Group. This is the first time Alibaba has issued guidance and follows the probe into its accounting practices by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also addressed its attempts to fight counterfeit goods.
Neiman Marcus Group Ltd. LLC reported its third consecutive quarterly drop in sales and an 81 percent drop in profits. Net income plunged to $3.8 million from $19.8 million a year earlier and total revenues dropped 4.2 percent to $1.17 billion. Same store sales dropped 5 percent in the quarter. On a year-to-date basis, total revenues dropped 2.7 percent to $3.82 billion from $3.93 billion . Year-to-date net earnings were $1.1million compared to $47.8 million in the prior year.